


One Bad Apple

by CaptainSteeb



Series: Steve and Bucky Try To Function [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1930s, Bullying, Corporal Punishment, Gen, Happy Ending, Humor, Kid Bucky Barnes, Kid Steve Rogers, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Protective Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24496183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainSteeb/pseuds/CaptainSteeb
Summary: It's the 1920's and twelve year old Bucky is tired of his teacher picking on him. In retribution, he and Steve sneak into the classroom and draw a giant penis on the chalkboard.“You ought to draw those dirty comics. You know, the ones with the girls with their tops off?” Bucky asked as he worked on the art piece.“I don’t wanna draw girls with their tops off. That’s gross,” Steve said as he added a giant vein up the length of the cock.“I don’t think it’s gross.” Bucky added more detail to the tip of the penis. “How come you drew a vein on it?”“Cause that’s what a cock looks like, you fuckin’ birdbrain,” Steve said. He added a few more veins for good measure.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Steve and Bucky Try To Function [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1765621
Comments: 8
Kudos: 252





	One Bad Apple

“Buck!”

“No.”

“Buck, get up.” Steve nudged at Bucky’s shoulder and, when that proved ineffective, licked his index finger and slid it into Bucky’s ear.

“Aw, Stevie!” Bucky sat up with a jolt, rubbing at his ear. He shoved Steve away from him and climbed out of bed.

The two of them had had a sleepover at Bucky’s place because Steve’s Ma had been stuck at the hospital overnight. Steve wasn’t allowed to be alone at night anymore since their neighbor had been robbed. There wasn’t much room in Bucky’s tenement, not now that Becca had been born and the living room had been converted to a nursery, so Steve and Bucky had bunked together on Bucky’s tiny, rickety bed.

“We gotta get to class, or else Mr. Goddard will make us beat the erasers again,” Steve said, moving his tiny furnace of a body off of Bucky’s bed and pulling his clothes on.

“He’ll make _me_ beat the erasers, on account of you almost died last time.” Bucky pulled on a short sleeved shirt and contemplated a wrinkled pair of pants for a few seconds before shrugging and pulling them on. He grabbed his book bag, pinched Steve on the arm, and went barreling out the door just to crash into his father.

His Pa looked him up and down and snorted. “You ain’t going out like that,” he said.

“C’mon, Pa.”

“I’m not letting my son walk around looking like a street rat. Turn around and find some pants that ain’t wrinkled up, and get your suspenders on, right now.” George crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow when Bucky opened his mouth to argue back, and Bucky deflated and dragged himself back into his room.

“Good morning, Mister Barnes,” Steve said with a big smile, hoisting his book bag onto one skinny shoulder. George smiled at him.

“How is your mother, Steve?”

“She’s doing good!”

Once Bucky was dressed properly and George approved his outfit, Bucky grabbed a couple of pieces of bread from his Ma on the way out. He shoved a chunk at Steve and the pair made their way down the street.

“I look like a schmuck,” Bucky said, shoving the bread into his mouth so he could pull the suspenders off of his shoulders and let them dangle by his thighs.

“You Pa’ll whip your ass if he sees you like that,” Steve answered through his mouthful.

“Better than lookin’ like a schmuck,” Bucky said firmly. He took a bite of the bread and wrinkled his nose at the staleness. “Did you do the reading?”

“Nah.”

“Me neither. Did you do your arithmetic?”

“Nah.”

Bucky sighed heavily. “Me neither.” He tore his bread in half as they approached the street corner and gave part of it to Mr. Pop. No one knew Mr. Pop’s real name, but he was always sitting on the same corner and making a popping noise with his lips. A few years back, when some Italian boys from another block came down and gave Bucky and Steve some trouble, Mr. Pop had thrown a bottle of moonshine on the bullies and scared them off.

“Thanks, kid,” Mr. Pop said, a repeat of the same conversation he and Bucky had been having for the past several years.

“No problem, Pop.”

They were still a few blocks away when Bucky noticed Steve shifting his book bag around and cringing every few steps. Wordlessly, he reached out and snatched the bag away, hoisting it onto his free shoulder. Neither of them said anything about it and kept trudging along the uneven half-paved sidewalk.

Once they arrived at school, they rushed upstairs and shoved their way into the seventh grade classroom right as the bell rang. Mr. Goddard, a tall, pale man with a pointy nose and severe eyes, shot a nasty look at Bucky.

“Almost late, Barnes.”

“Not quite late, Sir,” Bucky answered, dropping both book bags on his and Steve’s desks. He sat down and pulled out his beat-up, moldy copy of _Oral and Written English: Grade 7_ and slumped back in his wooden chair.

The day went on as usual. Bucky got a few spitballs shot at the back of his head because he and Steve sat in the front row and couldn’t retaliate without Mr. Goddard seeing. He was staring out the window when Mr. Goddard smacked his desk with a yard stick, making him jolt up with a yelp.

“Can you tell me the answer, Mr. Barnes?” Mr. Goddard said, his tall, gaunt form looming over Bucky’s desk. Bucky glanced at Steve, who had his eyes fixed on Mr. Goddard with a nasty glare. Desperate, he looked at the chalkboard to search for a clue.

“Um,” Bucky whispered. “I’m…No.”

Mr. Goddard sneered down at him, giving him the same look that some people gave his family when they strayed to a different part of town. “Of course not,” he said, then turned around and called Randall, the little teacher’s pet, up to the front to hand out some papers.

“I expect all of you to read this excerpt from The Merchant of Venice and turn in a four page summary by Friday. You’ll be graded on spelling and grammar as well as content. You’re dismissed for lunch." 

Once they were out of the classroom and in the dirty courtyard behind their school, Bucky and Steve huddled up in their corner under a shady birch tree and got their food out. Bucky had a few pieces of bread and cheese of questionable freshness. He glanced over he saw that Steve only had a very pathetic looking apple.

“Here, shrimp.” Bucky put a piece of cheese in between a slice of bread, folded it over into a makeshift sandwich, and shoved it at Steve.

“I don’t need no charity,” Steve snapped as he accepted the food and took a bite. “Mr. Goddard’s really got it in for ya, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Bucky was quietly fuming over it. He stretched out his legs in the dirt and watched as a spider went running off. “He’s a real greaseball. I gotta make him pay.”

Steve used his pinky to pick a piece of food out of his teeth and spat the morsel onto the ground. “How do you figure you’re gonna do that, smartass? He’ll just give you another beating with that ruler of his.”

“Then I won’t get caught.” Bucky perked up with an idea and Steve eyed him warily. “He’s gotta take lunch too, right? So he ain’t in the classroom right now.”

“He’s in the teacher’s lounge.”

“So we’ll go in—”

“ _We?_ ”

“We’ll go in and…” Bucky twisted his lips in thought for a second, then smiled. “We’ll go in and we’ll write somethin’ nasty on the board!”

Steve finished off his sandwich, licked his fingers, and bit into his apple. A second later, he spat out a mouthful of brown mush. “Aw, it’s rotten. Thought this one would be alright; usually Mrs. Morton throws out good ones.”

“That’s perfect!” Bucky snatched the apple out of Steve’s hands and examined it. “We’ll leave this on his desk and write something nasty on the board. You can draw, right, Stevie? You’re always drawin’ stuff.”

Steve flushed. “I can draw alright.”

“So you draw a big penis on the board, and I’ll leave this apple on his desk!” Bucky hastily shoved the last bit of bread into his mouth and leapt to his feet. “Let’s go!” he said, completely incomprehensible through the mouthful.

“We’re gonna get in trouble,” Steve said, standing up and grabbing his bag. The pair of them snuck around the perimeter of the courtyard, up the stairs, and into their classroom. They both let out a breath of relief when they saw it was empty.

“Alright,” Bucky said. He plopped the apple down right in the middle of Mr. Goddard’s desk, on top of a pamphlet by some guy called Henry Ford. The brown mush leaked out onto the paper, saturating the body of the text. When he turned around, Steve was busy drawing the biggest, hairiest cock and balls ever on the long chalkboard. Bucky picked up a piece of chalk and drew some big wet droplets by the head of the dick.

“You ought to draw those dirty comics. You know, the ones with the girls with their tops off?” Bucky asked as he worked on the art piece.

“I don’t wanna draw girls with their tops off. That’s gross,” Steve said as he added a giant vein up the length of the cock

“I don’t think it’s gross.” Bucky added more detail to the tip of the penis. “How come you drew a vein on it?”

“Cause that’s what a cock _looks_ like, you fuckin’ birdbrain,” Steve said. He added a few more veins for good measure.

“Not _mine_.”

“Well, I don’t wanna see your cock, so I don’t care,” Steve snapped back quickly, ears red. He added one more hair to the testicles then stepped back, dusting his hands off with a nod. Bucky set his chalk down and stood next to him to survey their masterpiece, slinging an arm around Steve’s thin little shoulders.

“Best thing I ever seen, pal,” Bucky said, holding a hand out in front of him as if he were showing Steve the Grand Canyon. “Aces. Now let’s get outta here before he gets back.”

They snuck down to the library and spent the rest of lunch giggling quietly to one another. When the bell rang, they rushed back to the seventh grade classroom and sat down, eagerly awaiting Mr. Goddard’s arrival. The other students were in an uproar, laughing and pointing and whispering to one another giddily. Bucky glanced over at Steve and they shared a smirk just as Mr. Goddard swept into the room.

“Right, class, now—” Mr. Goddard cut himself off, staring wide eyed and slack jawed at the board. After a moment, he collected himself and slowly turned toward the students, all of whom immediately quieted down and sat up straight.

“Who did this?” Mr. Goddard ground out, voice dangerously quiet.

Silence.

“Who. Did. This?”

More silence. Bucky’s heart was pounding.

Mr. Goddard went to turn back to the board, but his eyes caught on the rotten apple on his desk. He stepped over to it, picked it up, and stared down at the pamphlet it had been sitting on. When he looked back up, his eyes locked on Bucky.

“ _Barnes_.”

Bucky held his gaze. “Yes, Sir.”

“ _Come here_.”

Bucky took a deep breath, then stood up and approached the desk.

“You menace,” Mr. Goddard hissed, throwing the apple down and snatching up his ruler. “I know this was you!” And just as he was about to smack Bucky on the bottom, a tiny blond whirlwind appeared in the corner of Bucky’s eye, launching itself at Mr. Goddard and attacking his shins.

“Rogers!” Mr. Goddard yelped, backing away from the hissing and spitting little thing. Steve kept kicking at his shins, one of his threadbare shoes falling apart as he did so.

“You don’t know it was him!” Steve yelled, face red. “You don’t get to pick on him no more!”

“Rogers!” Mr. Goddard cried, backing up to the chalkboard right underneath the head of the giant penis. “Rogers, stop it this instant!”

“No! I don’t know why you pick on him but it ain’t right! It ain’t fair!”

Bucky, who had been standing frozen and gaping at the scene before him, surged forward and pulled Steve off of Mr. Goddard by the back of the shirt like a mother cat with her kitten. “Stop it, Stevie,” he said firmly, giving his friend a little shake, and Steve immediately stopped fighting. He was panting, his weak lungs overworked, but he didn’t take his furious eyes off of Mr. Goddard.

“Randall, go get Principal Hayes,” Mr. Goddard choked out, wide-eyed against the chalkboard.

“I don’t care what you do!” Steve snapped, crossing his arms. “It ain’t right, how you treat him! Just cause no one likes you don’t mean you get to take it out on Buck!”

Bucky heard the chatter of students behind him and kept a firm hold of Steve’ shirt. He couldn’t be sure that if he let go, Steve wouldn’t go right back to kicking the hell out of their teacher.

When the Principal came in, she surveyed the scene for a few silent minutes, then took Steve and Mr. Goddard down to her office. They had the librarian come in to watch the class and Bucky didn’t see either one of them for the rest of the day.

###

“Suspended?”

“Yep!” Steve smiled over at Bucky. “Three months. You gotta bring all my homework to me and I’ll give you my schoolwork to turn in once a week.”

Bucky shook his head in disbelief, trailing after Steve to walk down the shortcut to Steve’s tenement. Steve had one bare foot after his shoe had fallen apart earlier, and Bucky began calculating how he could get a replacement pair for his friend. “That ain’t fair. I’m the one who wanted to draw the penis.”

“Nah, it ain’t for that. It’s for kicking him, and I don’t feel bad about it.”

Bucky kicked an aggressive rat out of the way and jogged to keep up with Steve. “You didn’t have to come to my rescue.”

“I’m tired of him bullying you.” 

They both ducked down through a hole in the fence and approached Steve’s building.

Bucky squinted up at the tiny window on the outside of Steve’s apartment. “Do you want me to come up with you to explain?” he asked reluctantly.

“Nah,” Steve shrugged and took his book bag from Bucky. He looked a mess, oversized clothes on a too-thin frame, hair sticking up, one shoe missing. “My Ma’ll understand. Come by tomorrow after school, will you? We can go throw rocks in the river.”

“Yeah, alright.” Bucky went to turn away, but paused. He scuffed his shoe in the dirt and stared off into the distance above Steve’s head. “Stevie…” He trailed off with a sigh.

But Steve just smiled and clapped Bucky on the shoulder, eyes twinkling. “Yeah. You’re welcome, Buck. Anytime.”

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate every single Kudos and Comment left on my fics! Please share with me if you would like to see anything particular in this series.


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